San Marcos

 

Latest News for Barrio Writers in San Marcos:

In summer 2019, we are having our second annual Barrio Writers Workshop from July 8th - July 12th! We are thrilled to partner with the CSSW again to take our workshop out of the classroom and into San Marcos city proper.

 

To help inspire our writing, we will take excursions to the San Marcos river to learn about the indigenous peoples who have lived here for thousands of years, we will give youth cameras for visual storytelling, and we will incorporate the Texas State University campus itself into our workshop to keep our focus on higher education and cultural arts. In our workshop, we want our participants to get to know the land they live on and the rich history of San Marcos. And most importantly, we want the youth to see themselves one day making radical change on a college campus.

 

At the end of the workshop, the youth will submit their pieces to be published in the Barrio Writers Anthology and we will celebrate their hard work with a live reading! 

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As always, this workshop is free and open to registration for anyone between the ages of 13-19. If you would like to be involved with the workshop leaders, we are always looking for volunteer Writing Advisors who are 20 and older! 

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Registration is open now! Please feel free to contact bwsanmarcostx@gmail.com or (918) 557-9848 for any questions. 

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Barrio Writers of San Marcos, Texas

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The Barrio Writers (BW) program in San Marcos is partnered with Texas State University's Center for the Study of the Southwest (CSSW) and supported by Red Salmon Arts. The chapter was started as a 10-week workshop in spring 2017 by Marilyse V. Figueroa, who volunteered with BW Austin under founder, Sarah Rafael García, and Leticia Urieta, Austin, TX Chapter Director. Since opening, the San Marcos chapter has found its identity in the Central Texas and larger Southwest region. The workshop focuses on writers of color and other marginalized backgrounds from the Southwest and pairs this with the cultural history of San Marcos and the surrounding areas. 

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In Spring 2019, the San Marcos chapter teamed up with Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos to offer a free zine-making workshop for youth 13-19 years old. Zines are self-published magazines. They have been used by Martin Luther King Jr., the RRRiot Girls, and various social justice and artist collectives to raise awareness about social issues or be a platform for marginalized voices.

 

The workshops were a two-part series in which youth read zines from the Texas and Southwest area, were exposed to radical movements and writings by marginalized peoples, and learned how to make their own zines.

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Please email the San Marcos, TX Director, Marilyse V. Figueroa, at bwsanmarcostx@gmail.com for more information on future workshops and any questions you may have on the SMTX chapter.

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About the Director of San Marcos, TX:

Marilyse V. Figueroa is a queer nonbinary Xicanx-Puerto Rican writer from Oklahoma and Tejas. Their work has been published in The I Scream Social Anthology, Acentos Review, Chifladazine, St. Stucía Zine, Literariedad, and many others. Marilyse received their Bachelor's in English Literature and Cultural Studies with a focus in Creative Writing from the University of Oklahoma, and has a Master's in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Texas State University with a focus in Fiction. Marilyse has been in the workshops of Jennifer duBois, Karen Russell, T. Geronimo Johnson, ire'ene lara silva, Nabila Lovelace, and others. They are also a member of the Austin, TX Writers Collective of women and nonbinary writers, Lengas Loc@s. They have been volunteering with Barrio Writers since 2016. 

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